Eerie noises startle four families.
Mysterious sounds in new houses.
Loughboro’ ‘ghost’.
Ghostly sounds at night have alarmed four families at Loughborough; they have been scared so much that they have tried, without success, to exchange houses. The Knightthorpe Estate is composed of several streets of council houses, and building operations concluded as late as last year. Palmer-avenue is a cul-de-sac and it is in th elast group of four houses on the right hand side that the trouble has occurred.
In the first of these lives Mrs Sanders, who told a “Mercury” man today of her unusual experiences. “One night,” she said, “I had been in bed only a few minutes when my son rushed into the room and said, ‘Mother, have you been at my door?’ I told him I had not and he said he was awakened by the noise of someone turning the handle, which he saw slowly turned as though by someone on the other side. Another night I distinctly heard a pan fall in the pantry, but a search failed to reveal any fallen utensil. My husband has repeatedly searched the house in the middle of the night when we have been awakened by these noises.”
Mrs Hallam, who lives next door, said: “I have heard a crash on the roof, as though someone were trying to get in, and I have been terrified. This has occurred regularly once a week. One of us is always hearing noises on the roof.”
Mrs Lee, giving her version, said: “I thought it was the electricity. It sounds always as though someone is tapping on the skylight on the roof.”
Mrs Cayless, who lives in the last of the four houses, has also been alarmed, and ultimately a complaint was lodged with the Corporation Electricity Department, who sent workmen to examine the cables, but no solution was reached.
The strong opinion in the locality is that the ghost of a former doctor, from whom the avenue takes its name, is responsible fo rthe disturbances. This noted doctor preached in the town for many years in the seventies and eighties. The doctor owned and lived on the estate on which the avenue and the adjoining thoroughfares now stand, and it is the firm belief of many that the old gentleman buried treasure on the land. The “ghost” had been walking ever since th ehouses were erected, and it is a singular coincidence that the only houses where disturbances are caused are the four at the end of the avenue.
Leicester Daily Mercury, 14th March 1927.